Pangloss

How does their compliance with Chinese demands make that statement, though?

Well you were interesting before, but now it just seems like you're straying into ideologies. Stuff like this just perpetuates stereotypes regardless of what the truth happens to be. In my opinion, neither of these situations with Google can be dismissed with simplistic ideological syllogisms like the above.

Anyway, some REALLY interesting posts above, even if I have reservations about them. I appreciate the feedback. My main thing here was just to point out that there seems to be some kind of confluence and at least irony here, and that it's troubling. It hints of larger problems that may loom on the horizon. In the end I tend to agree with you guys. The issues are different enough that one tends to agree with Google when based solely on logical grounds. But that's also part of why it bothers me. The logical decision is not always, necessarily, the best one.

Okay, but again I think this denies the obvious irony of the situation. I think you have a point there, and I'm not decided enough on the issue to disagree with you. I'm just bothered by the obvious similarities between the two issues.

But you actually mention the key ingredient that suggests hypocrisy -- in one case they're acceding to a government's wishes, and in the other case they are not. Does that at least make it... ironic? One of the points that the government has made in this case is that they're not actually requesting personal information. There's no direct tie between the search data results they're asking for and actual user identities. They just want to know what people (in general) are looking for. (Is it not reasonable for the government to know how many pornographic searches are actually taking place? Even if you disagree with the government, don't you WANT them to fight this case and lose, so the law's unconstitutionality will be upheld?) And here's a real neuron-burner: Doesn't China want more or less the same thing? So isn't this really about which government they think is more threatening to their business? So I guess the question becomes, why is it okay for Google to comply with the US government, but not comply with the Chinese government? Does this tell us something about the relative strengths of these two governments? I don't know about you, but I find this confluence of events troubling.

Is Google being hypocritical? This question is being asked in a number of venues these days, due to the ironic confluence of Google's China situation (which involves Google's compliance with China's censorship of the Internet) and Google's legal trouble with the US Justice Department (in which the government has requested usage data from Google). The basic case for "it's hypocrisy" is framed fairly well in this editorial by New Orleans Times Picayune reporter and columnist Stephen Sabludowsky on his Bayou Buzz web site: His full column can be found here: http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=6301 Here's another interesting quote in which he supports his case a bit more fully: Thoughts?

You've answered my question (to give examples), which I appreciate. But this doesn't make a prima facie case for more freedoms. It gives examples of freedoms that exist in one place but not the other. What freedoms might exist in the US that don't exist in the UK or Australia? Are you saying that there are none? I would find that hard to believe, because a number of examples of freedom curtailings in UK and Australia have been in the news recently, some of which (such as the handling of domestic terrorism) have been discussed here. So how do I know that one is not greater than the other? Since you admit your opinion is partisan, I need more objective information to assess this. Note that I left out any issue of partisanship here. I don't have any problem with your statement of opinion.

That's assuming that he actually made a mistake. I don't know if he did or not, but it seems clear to me that he was going to make that statement even if what actually happened was that Bill Clinton ran in from a nearby glade, grabbed the gun, and pulled the trigger. That statement was about politics, not apologies. Exactly. Oh well, I've said my peace on it. No point in belaboring the issue.

Examples?

If I have a predisposition regarding the opinions of George Will, it's from reading literally hundreds of his columns over the years. How many have you read? As for an "in-built prejudice", you need to read more of my posts, not to mention Bascule's. He and I probably agree more than disagree, but more to the point I don't think it's very polite to cast aspersions on other people's mere expressions of opinion. Of course you're going to take everyone's opinions here with a "large grain of salt". Why wouldn't you? Nobody brought you here to program you to think a certain way.

For what it's worth, I applaud your courage and intentions. Everyone goes through moral dilemmas. Better to recognize and deal with them, even if you decide later that you've made a mistake, than to pretend they don't exist.

It's unfortunate how much the perception of diametric opposition pervades, even in a forum where I've been personally accused of being over the top with the very same problem.

Thanks. Not the first time I've made THAT mistake.

So much for the moral high ground, then. You've just thrown it out the window, hon.

Not quite sure I was able to finesse your opinion out of the double negatives above, but I guess what you're saying is that you agree with him? (hehe) I follow George Will (obviously) and find him to be one of the most interesting moderate conservative columnists presently working. Every now and then he'll be just a little bit too much of an apologist or marginalizer, but most of the time he offers very interesting perspective and insight. That's why he writes for the Washington Post, after all. He's their "token conservative columnist" (an unfair label to both the paper and Will, but so it goes). More or less the Post's answer to the role William F. Buckley played at the NY Times.

You would not be allowed to sit on such a jury, unless both parties agreed that your predisposition was acceptable.

Umm... Umm... Geez, okay, I got nothin. You got me there.

There wasn't anything "awesome" about that, except in so far as it was a first-rate dive. If Dick Cheney were a boxer every gambler in the country would have just torn up their betting ticket in disgust. That was the most blatantly obvious pandering that I have seen by a politician since "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." I don't know which is worse: What it says about Dick Cheney, or what it says about this country. I guess all that matters to some people is that Cheney "take responsibility". I've seen reality shows that were less vapid and senseless. Of all the screwball political shenanigans I've seen over the past dozen or so years since we threw common sense and common ground out the window, this one absolutely takes the cake.

The Chappaquiddick comparisons are some of the stupidest things I've ever heard in politics in all the time I've been following it.

I added the fixed URL to the first post (that's the only change I made). Thanks.

http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2006-02-14/tv/2 Really Bryant? Wanna tell that to 2005 speed skating world champion Shani Davis? Or perhaps he can explain to Sweden's Lina Andersson's gold medal is meaningless because she only had to sprint 1.5 kilometers on nordic skis to win it. What a moron.

Just out of idle curiosity, why do you care then? I mean, it's my tax money, not yours, right?

Just as a brief moderator note, the board software has a little bit of a quirk here in that if you strip the "http://" from the front of a URL *after* the board has already "shortened" the URL (as above), then the URL is basically ruined because of the elipses used to shorten it (the "..." part). (I'm guessing that's what happened there.) If you can find the original article again I can append it to your original post for you.